Case Study: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center achieves service-line cost transparency and $42M in savings with Health Catalyst

A Service Line Approach to Improving Women’s Health

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a large integrated delivery network with more than 20 hospitals and 500 clinics, faced rising per‑patient costs and a lack of visibility into the true cost of care because traditional department‑based accounting hid patient‑level costs and variation. To support a shift to service‑line management and population health, UPMC partnered with Health Catalyst and adopted an Enterprise Data Warehouse and an Activity‑Based Costing Data Mart (Health Catalyst licensed an activity‑based cost management system developed by UPMC).

Health Catalyst’s EDW and activity‑based costing solution aggregated clinical, billing, and operational data to assign patient‑level costs, produce service‑line P&Ls and physician variation reports, and drive data‑informed practice changes. The work identified $42 million in cost‑reduction opportunities (about 2% of targeted service‑line cost), realized $5.0 million in supplies savings (including $1.0M in neurology and $1.5M in orthopedics), delivered up to a 97% improvement in time to access information, and reduced reporting effort (saving an FTE and cutting report time from a week to an hour).

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Paula Lounder

Director